Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Melody of Science

"Two times during the last few weeks, my wife has been asked to write a song. A very specific song that is, a song for special occasions when a person is celebrated e.g. for a 50th birthday or a Confirmation. The way to produce songs of this type is to use keywords from a person’s life that one way or other sums up his/her main events and achievements, and to fit it into the melody lines of a familiar song – often a very simple and somewhat traditional melody. I’m sure this must be common tradition in other countries too."

"Let me summarize the main ingredients that were gathered for one of these songs: “Childhood friends, the parents’ house, boyfriends, school, marriage, kids, working at X, likes reading and picking berries”. When I saw this list, I couldn’t help thinking: Is that it? My wife is good at this stuff, but even she protested about the apparent dullness and ordinariness of the keywords. There must be more to a life than that. The question is what the keywords for the song about your life would look like."

Read the rest of the post at the Blogosphere of the European Association of Geochemistry.

Me:

I'm a geologist at the University of Oslo, working as a senior researcher at Physics of Geological processes. My research interests include mass extinctions and past environmental perturbations - and the role of volcanism and metamorphism. My main interest besides my work is non-fictional writing. My first popular science book (about natural disasters) was published in Norway in 2006, and was released in the UK in 2009 and Italy in 2010. My second book (Bergtatt / In High Places) was published in October 2011. Topic: The history of mountains.